


here forever (by my side)

by weatheredlaw



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Racism, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 15:36:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6290146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her mother is Lady Seeker, and Tigana has grown up in the Hunterhorn Mountains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	here forever (by my side)

**Author's Note:**

> tigana is the name of cassandra's mother, if you'll remember <3 enjoy.

Her mother is Lady Seeker, and Tigana has grown up in the Hunterhorn Mountains. Her earliest memory is hanging upside down from the tallest pine in the middle of the camp, Seeker Moira shouting for her to get down before her mother sees. She remembers being patched, later, by the roaring fire in the meeting hall, her mother clucking over her and gingerly wrapping her sprained wrist.

“Wherever do you get such recklessness, little dragon?”

“Not from you, mama?”

Her mother smiles, a rare thing, and kisses her forehead. “Perhaps, my love.”

 

* * *

 

Every year, her mother’s friends come to visit – the Chargers, usually, but sometimes the Inquisitor, or Cullen and Josephine.

“Lady Seeker,” the Commander always begins, before embracing her warmly. “Oh, terribly sorry.” He hefts Tigana into his arms. “I was talking to you, little one.”

It’s the same, almost every time, until he can’t lift her any longer.

“Maker,” he says, the year she’s turned sixteen. “However did you grow so tall?”

Tigana laughs, takes his present, and allows herself to be dismissed. She pauses outside the door to unwrap the little box, delighted at the necklace –

“—not told her?”

“No. It hasn’t…the time has not been right.”

“Maker, Cassandra, she’s no longer a _child_ —”

“She is,” her mother snaps. “And she is mine. I will decide what is best for her.”

Tigana hears Cullen sigh, shift in his chair.

“Varric wouldn’t want it this way.”

A scrape – the large armchair her mother always occupies in the hall slides across the wooden floors.

“How _dare_ you tell me—” A choke. “You do not _know_ —”

“Did he know?”

“We have discussed this.”

“Yes, and you haven’t been very forthcoming.”

The room is silent. Nothing but the fire makes a sound.

Then – “He knew her. He was here, until…”

A shift. “It’s alright.”

“It isn’t. She deserves to know, but it is my own cowardice that keeps me from telling her. Telling her that she had a _father_ who loved her, and—”

Tigana runs.

She can’t bear to hear her mother weep.

 

* * *

 

Their little home in the middle of the camp is well-worn, decorated with their favorite things – art from her mother’s friends, flowers Tigana picks every day, swords her mother cherishes. She has never bothered her mother’s room, never asked to see the things she keeps locked away. Now, though…

“Tigana?”

She swallows, calls out, “In my room, mother.”

Cassandra pushes the door open and leans against the frame. “What did Cullen give you this time?” Tigana lifts the chain and pendant in her hands. “It’s very lovely. You’ll thank him tomorrow at breakfast.”

“Of course, mother.” Tigana leans into her mother’s touch, allowing her to pull up a chair behind her and take a course brush to her hair. She doesn’t point out the redness of Cassandra’s eyes – it won’t do either of them any good. Instead, she closes her eyes, focuses on the feel of the brush combing through her hair – red, she thinks to herself, red like no one else’s – until her mother braids it down her back.

“Goodnight, my love.”

Tigana looks up as her mother rises from the chair, takes her hand, and gives it a squeeze.

“Goodnight, mother.”

 

* * *

 

She holds her mother’s secret very close for some time. Several months, really – until the day a letter arrives that stops her mother cold in her tracks. She looks up, locks eyes with her daughter, and gestures for Seeker Moira to follow her.

Tigana follows, though she is asked to go. She trails them after a dozen requests from her mother to please, my love, find something _else_ to do –

“This is about my father, isn’t it?”

Her mother goes white as snow, and Moira presses her hands to the girl’s shoulders.

“Tiga, love, your mother has asked you—”

“No,” Cassandra says. “No, she…she deserves to know. Come with me, my love. I have…many things to discuss with you. Moira, thank you. Please pick up where I left off with the recruits.”

“Of course.”

Cassandra closes the door to their home, strides into her room, and returns with a small, locked chest.

“I am an…abysmal story teller, as you remember.”

“The worst,” Tigana says quietly, trying to comfort her mother with a smile.

Cassandra reaches for the ring of keys at her belt and selects the smallest one. “Your father was quite skilled at it. It was the thing that brought us together, the first time we met.”

“That’s how you fell in love.”

Her mother laughs. “No, Maker, no. The first time we met I interrogated him. Tied him to a chair and forced him to give me information.”

“I should have known.”

“We fell in love much later. It took time, and a great deal of patience on his part. I was not easy to woo, or so he said.” She pulls out a tattered book, a romance novel.

“ _Swords and Shields?_ ”

“Yes. This was one of his. See? There, on the back. That is a portrait of him.”

Tigana turns the book over and snorts. “It’s _silly_ ,” she says.

“It was ridiculous, but he adored it all the same.” Cassandra takes the book back with great care, setting it back in the chest. “These are the letters were exchanged, after the war. For two years, we wrote to one another, until we saw each other again at Halamshiral.”

“You went _two years_ without seeing him?”

Her mother nods. “It was never meant to be easy, you see. He was a dwarf, head of a Guild and soon to be the leader of—”

“I’m half _dwarf?_ ” Tigana balks.

“Yes. Though you have inherited the Pentaghast bones it would seem.” Cassandra reaches out and touches the end of her braid. “But you have his complexion, his coloring, his eyes.” She taps her daughter’s chin. “And when you smile, you are very much your father’s daughter.”

“Mother.” Tigana snaps the chest shut. “What does all of this _mean?_ ”

Cassandra sighs. “You were…conceived at Halamshiral.” Tigana flushes. “You _wanted_ the truth. And the truth is I had not seen the man I loved in two years, and I had _missed_ him. We had lived, despite all odds, twice over. But I was asked to return to the mountains, and became Lady Seeker. And your father…he was Viscount of Kirkwall, he couldn’t abandon his city.” She takes her daughter’s hand in her own. “But he loved you, and he was here the night you were born. We traveled to the city when you were very small, and he came to visit here, as often as he could, until you were four years old. I doubt you remember.”

“I don’t.”

Her mother reaches up and taps her temple. “Search for it someday, my love. I’m sure you will remember his face.”

Tigana sighs. “So he left us, then? He couldn’t make time for the two of us?”

Her mother looks up, shaking her head. “He died,” she says, rather simply.

Tigana swallows. “Oh.”

“He was assassinated. He made incredible changes to his city, and he paid a terrible price.” She speaks plainly, as if telling her daughter of troop movements along the Orlesian border, or perhaps how well the crops have done this year. “We could not attend his service, we were under siege. You remember hiding under the floorboards of the hall?”

“Yes,” Tigana says, her throat tight.

The wound has clearly scarred for her mother – the idea of her lover’s death is old to her, something that can no longer be felt the way Tigana is feeling it now. She had always been perfectly happy to think of the two of them as a pair, never needing the man who had fathered her.

Now she feels the loss, starkly, and reels back.

“How can you speak of it all this way?”

“It has been twelve years, Tigana.”

“And it doesn’t pain you?”

Her mother’s head snaps up, eyes shining with tears. “It pains me each and _every_ day. I was not able to bid him a proper goodbye. They refused to bury him with the _human_ Viscounts who had come before him, and the Guild would not recognize you as his daughter, nor I as his—” She stops, a hand flying to her lips.

Tigana’s rage stumbles.

“You’d _married_ him.”

Cassandra nods. “In Kirkwall, when you were a babe. I had thought to resign my place as Lady Seeker, and join him in the city. But we decided to wait another year. And then another. And then…then another.” She chokes. “It was a mistake. But how could we know? How could we _ever_ know it would end so quickly?”

“Mother…”

“I returned here, and made the decision to raise you among the Seekers. You will have to leave from here, soon, but that was always inevitable—”

“ _Leave?_ What do you mean, where will I go?”

“Val Royeaux. The Divine has arranged for you to attend a school, to receive a good education and training in…in whatever you’d like. Music, art, weapons—”

“I don’t need that.”

“You cannot come of age in the wilderness, my love.”

“I certainly _can_. I’m sixteen, mother. I am not a child—”

“ _You are_ ,” her mother snaps. “I do not make this decision lightly. The Guild has chosen to recognize you as your father’s true heir. If you receive an education, you will be respected by them as much as any human could. Kirkwall will be a better place for you than here.”

“You’re sending me to the _Marches_ after I’m educated.”

“Don’t speak ill of your father’s homeland. The city is a good one, he made it that way. You will benefit from his sacrifices, as you were always meant to—”

“I will not,” Tigana says, rising from her place on the floor. “I will not simply do as you _bid_ when it is my life at stake.”

“For the Maker’s _sake_ , Tigana, I am not sending you to the _gallows._ I am sending you to school, to a career that will make you successful. You will find a good husband in Kirkwall, a good life—”

“Without you?”

“Yes,” her mother snaps. “I cannot abandon my post. I cannot leave the Seekers.”

“But you won’t let me become one.”

“It is hardly necessary.”

Tigana shakes her head. “You don’t get to decide what is necessary for me. Not about this.” She turns, bursts through the door and into the dark of the camp. More time had passed than she realized, and she bolts, now, straight for the trees.

“ _Tigana!_ ” Her mother’s voice carries, but she keeps going, until the thick limbs and leaves obscure the light of the torches, and her mother voice becomes a distant echo.

 

* * *

 

It only takes Moira ten minutes to find her, and Tigana suspects a good seven of those minutes were spent pretending she didn’t know where she’d gone. The Seeker settles by her side and looks up between the spaces made by the crisscrossing limbs of the forest.

“You shouldn’t have run away,” she says quietly. “Your mother is very worried.”

“It’s been twelve minutes.”

“You know how she gets.” Moira looks over at her. “You cannot blame her for wanting a better life for you. If your father were still alive, this would have happened much sooner, and all in Kirkwall. They have a grand university there, you know. It was built in his honor.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely.”

“The Viscount is a good man, Ser Cavin. The junior, I believe. The senior is older than Ser Hawke.”

Tigana looks up. “ _Hawke._ I could find Hawke, I could go with her—”

“She wouldn’t let you,” Moira says quickly. “She was family to your father, and adores your mother, you know this. She’d drag you to Orlais by your ear and drop you off on the Divine’s front step herself.”

Tigana scowls. “Am I allowed no say in this, then?”

“Perhaps if you did not shout at your mother and run into the trees like a child, she would be less inclined to treat you like one.” Moira takes her hand. “If you are angry that you were never told of your father, that I will understand. But don’t be angry with your mother for wanting something greater than these woods and this life for you. We committed to the Order a very long time ago, and cannot abandon it now. But you are _free_ , Tiga. You are free to live and be loved. And you should take every opportunity to do both of those things.”

 

* * *

 

She returns to her mother.

“Forgive me,” she says.

“Always, my love. Can you forgive me? I was wretched to keep secrets from you. It was selfish, and I am sorry. The story should have been ours to share, not mine to tell.”

“I can never be angry with you, mama. I’ll go to Val Royeaux, if it’s what you want.”

“We’ll speak of this in the morning,” Cassandra says, kissing her forehead.

“Moira says there is a school in Kirkwall.”

“You are not old enough yet, but I will write to Bran at the end of the week. He was a friend of your father’s, and his son is Viscount. You and I will do this _together._ ”

Tigana nods. “Of course. You should sleep, mother. You look tired.”

She sighs. “When did you grow up, little dragon? I feel as though it slipped right past me.” She stands and moves toward her room, but turns back to face her daughter. “Here.” She hands over the smallest key. “The chest is yours, now. Your father…left many things for you. I think it is high time you saw them. But on your own. You…are right. You are not a child, and it does us no good for me to treat you as one.” She embraces her daughter. “I love you. Rest, my darling. And we’ll look upon this with fresh eyes after breakfast.”

“Yes, mother.”

Tigana stands in the center of the room, the key and chest clutched in her hands, watching her mother’s retreating back.

She goes to her room, sets the chest on the bed, and then thinks better of it.

She’s certain there are many secrets in this box, but the world has grown so small around her, and her lids droop. She touches her hair – red, red like no one else’s – and closes her eyes.

The man her father was can wait ‘til morning.

For now, she dreams of who he might have been, and counts herself blessed that she can at all.


End file.
